When I stood at the door of the storage unit, there was a moment pregnant with possibility, the time known as fate was hovering in the balance; was my father prepared to pass on some things that defied normal heirlooms? He asked me to look inside two black plastic bags, which I could see, contained a lot of rotten wood and some sort of edifice that was carved, perhaps, centuries ago and had undergone the ravages of time. "This is what we called "Mormor", which is what we called 'Grandmother' in our family". I brought Mormor home to Spirit Valley, New Mexico, along with a small white cardboard box that was marked "Mor Mor face pieces". You see, this was, it turned out, a figurehead that was given to my grandfather by a friend before Thorsten moved to America. She was, it seems, recovered from a sunken ship in the Baltic Sea; a figurehead from a Swedish ship. My dad said the Swedes might be upset that an antiquity was removed from the 'Motherland' (or 'Fatherland'). Thorsten treasured this piece enough to have it affixed on his newly built home studio in Bryn Athyn, a part of Philadelphia. The home was what was called a small home back then, Architected by a famous architect and actually got into a book entitled 1936 Book of Small Houses, which I amazingly discovered as I researched the architect and suddenly came across this book ( https://archive.org/stream/ArchitecturalForum0001/1936BookOfSmallHomes.#page/n133 ) that featured his work and then, to my amazement, there was, on house #55, page 133, the Thorsten and Cyriel Sigstedt house with pictures of Mormor on it as an architectural ornament! I then found a copy that was in the UK, of all places, and bought it for $15 and it arrived a few weeks later. This adventure was taking on multi-dimensions. I pulled out the little box with the face parts and there was a beautiful nose and part of an upper lip, half an eye and, separately, part of a lower lip and chin! When I placed the lips together, an electric jolt grabbed me and I began to begin to cry; not sure if it was my mother's lips (she was also 1/2 Swedish) or, at least, reminded me of them or something primal in me! I decided to attempt the restoration and began the process quickly and decided on using a disc brake for a base and began welding rusty rebar units that made a sort of open ended ovals, with overlapping end pieces and a space between the ends, like large chain link repair units. I carefully marked them and drilled or plasma blasted holes for long black square drive screws, which I used to attach the various pieces (probably 20 altogether, more or less) in their basic positions on the sculpture. I also welded these steel units together where I got them to kiss each other inside Mormor's body cavity, so that they grew inside her belly and chest into their own sculptural reality ( had actually begun welding some of them together some years ago in a sort of free-form abstract sculpture, so I had the inclination to see their possibilities as form). This process took some time and careful riddle and puzzle solving in order to position these critical parts. I decided to let the rebar stick up a little past the shoulders as a sort of post-modern, personal statement of what was happening and they, interestingly, sort of worked with this beautiful time ravaged woman and her already amazing braids and other whorls carved as ornament common, I think, to this style of figurehead. The view into and through her interior added mystery and intrigue and the method to restore was now transparent. I also added a wonderfully textured piece of driftwood from a recent flood, the wood being, probably, box elder; a sort of maple. The curve was clearly reminiscent of her neck, back and spine and went into the back of her head as a support for the head, which was held up by minimal wood that survived the rot. I affixed the face parts at some point and they fit wonderfully and there was a huge cavern left on the right side of her head that went from hairline to her neck, which I decided to leave as it added great drama, negative space and space to allow the eye to transfix on both the healthy and the missing parts of her face. I think she is actually, perhaps, more beautiful in some odd way-this way. I did nothing to the paint or any other details other than apply Clapham's beeswax. The effect is authentic, unique, personal to this artist and a presentation of what Mormor really is at this point in time. I believe some attempts were made to try to market her to the Swedish museums system and other US museums and even Ebay and, it turns out that I was the most interested 'customer' in this saga. I still am. Another fascinating detail is that I wrote a piece about my open heart surgery exactly one year ago. The piece morphed into a pirate fantasy based upon a Winslow Homer painting of a fisherman in a boat and some mixed weather, high choppy sea and a distant ship. The painting is pregnant with the unknown and the obvious strengths of all of the components. I had picked up a copy of this work of art at a thrift store a short time before I found out about my heart, then realized that this situation was mine and then I realized the distant ship was a pirate ship, in my imagination, and I proceeded from there ( High Desert Swashbuckling on http://thor-sigstedt.blogspot.com ). The amazing part is that I converted actors in my real life drama into pirates and other maritime features and when it came to my wife, Belle, I decided to feature her as the model for the beautiful figurehead for the good pirates, because of how I feel about her and how wonderfully chiseled her features are; perfect for a lovely, timeless figurehead. These are the only two times that I have ever thought much about figureheads and so now I happily swim in that ancient and lovely world. Oh yeah, if you look carefully at Mormor Belle, she kind of looks like she is with child, which makes her all the more alive and powerful as we go along our 'troubled voyages in calm, calm waters'. Happy Sailing!
